


Glitch (Errortale)

by abaresque



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Reader Is Not Frisk (Undertale), Sans (Undertale) Remembers Resets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 23:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16670743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abaresque/pseuds/abaresque
Summary: We live in a game where toying around leaves more consequences than anyone can ever imagine.--Error Sans belongs to Crayon Queen.





	Glitch (Errortale)

**Author's Note:**

> please note: highly inaccurate, story doesn't follow original plot. human reader cannot reset, and is probably an anomaly themselves.  
> basically Errors origins, but with you involved.  
> before I get sued for copyright infringement, error sans belongs to Crayon Queen, and his story can be read on askerrorsans.tumblr.com.
> 
> this is a combination of two chapters from a very old draft, from early 2017. i had planned to make an entire story, but lost motivation as time went on. eventually, i decided that these chapters alone were good enough to be published, though the story remains incomplete. enjoy.

Finally, you had made it. Everyone had made it. You, Sans, Papyrus, Toriel, Asgore, Undyne and Alphys were standing side by side, staring into the horizon, the setting sun shining directly into all of your faces, painting everything a majestic gold. For once, there had been no resets, at least for long enough for all of you to make it out of the underground.

You reached out for Sans' hand, your eyes not leaving the horizon as your fingers brushed against his hoodie. Sans noticed, and grabbed your hand gently, lacing his fingers in yours. Everyone else was commenting on the view and it's unspeakable beauty, but the two of you were silent and in your own world.

Out of nowhere, you heard Sans' voice beside you. 'you know what's more beautiful, kid?'

'What?'

Sans tore his eyes away from the horizon, the lighting seeming to highlight every groove in his bones, his hoodie tinted gold. You met his eyes, catching a faint blue forming on his cheeks.

'you.'

You let out a short laugh, smiling, a blush making its way up your cheeks. Sans seemed so happy as he looked at you, as if you were shining brighter and more beautiful than all the suns in the universe combined. The skeleton shyly lifted a hand to brush a stray strand of hair out of your face.

Your heart filled with warmth, and you placed a hand on Sans' shoulder. However, something heavy weighed on your soul.

"Sans... Will there be any more resets?"

Sans flinched, his smile suddenly looking more forced. "... let's not think about that for now."

You nodded, looking down at Sans' slippers. You didn't want any more resets. Although you had Sans and were no longer alone, you finally wanted to have a life. Both of you remembered everything, and had suffered together for so long, you hated being stuck in an endless cycle, and hated being cut off and thrown back to the beginning over and over without warning at any time.

You reached forward, pulling Sans into an embrace, your head resting in the crook of his neck. Sans was surprised for a moment, but he held you back, his hands reaching up to wrap around your waist. He felt so warm, his presence so soothing, you didn't want to let go, you didn't want this moment to end.

You didn't want what was going to happen next.

It started with an odd feeling. Nearly everyone had already gone their own way, Toriel watching the two of you and smiling warmly, Asgore at the end still gazing awkwardly at the sun, which was now sinking below the edge of the horizon, stars beginning to materialise at the other end of the earth. Toriel suddenly looked up, away, as if she smelled something off. Asgore straightened his back. The weight in your chest grew heavier as you looked back up, eyes widened in horror, and you felt Sans grip the back of your shirt desperately.

"Sans - what's happening..."

"(y/n)-"

The surroundings began to flicker, blur, twist. The sun disappeared, a blank, colourless void began to fill the sky, and everything slowly began to vapourise in a shower of code that floated up and away.

 _Our world is nothing but a series of numbers,_ you remembered yourself telling Sans, 83 resets ago. As the two of you held on to each other, Sans' eyes widened as he accepted the harsh reality.

"it's a true reset..."

"What-"

"this is what i was afraid of... this is why i told you to stop trying..."

Sans' voice was frustrated, laced with an emotion you couldn't understand. Toriel faded away, her body disintegrating into code fragments, the numbers briefly lifting into the air in vertical columns before disappearing. Asgore followed suit. Soon, everything had faded to white, and the ground itself began to disappear beneath your feet. You felt your grip on reality loosening, as if your body wanted to break apart, and Sans grabbed you even tighter as he began to glitch out as well.

"(y/n), please, it -- can't end here, it can't-"

"DON'T LET GO! WE'LL SURVIVE THIS!"

A lie. Obvious, blatant, a cry of desperation. Sans' eye burned blue as he pulled you towards him, and you felt the tears staining your sleeve as he buried his face in your shoulder. It was getting painful now, a scream tearing through your throat as you gripped Sans even tighter. It was nearly a void around the two of you now, and you could feel Sans' physical form deteriorating, as was yours.

"(y/n)- don't forget- don't you dare forget-"

Sans' voice was rough, scratchy, pained, as he held on to you one last time for dear life. Gravity itself seemed to disappear, and both of you hovered in a rapidly growing emptiness, noise itself seemingly becoming warped as everything was torn out and sent back to that same place in time. You screamed out Sans' name, barely able to withstand it any longer. Sans let out a sigh.

"i love you."

At that moment, you suddenly realised there was nothing in your arms, and the last thing you heard was your own shrill cry, desperate, pained, hopeless, terrified, warped by the void around you before your body betrayed you, vaporising to code as you felt a shattering pain tear through your body. Your determination was strong, but whoever was doing the Resets was stronger.

\--

**[TRUE RESET]**

You opened your eyes.

Everything was the same, as you expected it to be for the True Resets Sans mentioned here and there, except for one thing.

You remembered.

You brushed your hand against the ground, feeling the thick bed of golden flowers beneath you. Seconds ago, those hands were deep in the fabric of Sans' worn, blue hoodie, feeling the hard bone of his body beneath his clothes as you held on to him.

You sat up, feeling empty and stiff. All your effort, all your pain, all your perseverance, had all been for nothing. You felt your throat tighten, the backs of your eyes beginning to sting as your mouth twisted, and you squeezed your eyes shut as you broke down into a mess of hopeless sobs.

The empty space beneath the mountain echoed with your cries, the tears running in constant streams down your face. You had no idea how long you were there, the thin beam of sunlight from the top of the mountain shining onto you and reflecting off your glistening tears.

An anger began to well inside you, anger at the resets, anger at whoever was doing them. Did they enjoy your pain? Did they enjoy everyone's suffering? Did they enjoy seeing everyone's effort being reduced to zero by them? Did they simply want everyone to suffer?

How warped could they be? What was in their mind, their soul as they did all of this? What was their purpose?

Or did they just enjoy inflicting suffering on everyone they knew?

The thoughts filled you with a dark fury and bitterness. Unknowingly, the corner of your soul was suddenly tainted with a hint of black, like ink diffusing into a coloured liquid. Your hands balled into fists, knuckles turning white as you raised your head to the ceiling, your cry hoarse, ripped out from your throat, the loathing evident in every word.

" _WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT!!!!!!_ "

Your voice echoed back toward you, and you received no reply.

The tears seemed to have suddenly stopped flowing, the darkness tainting your soul seemingly becoming your driving force. You stood up, dragging your body off the ground, making your way stiffly to where you knew Flowey would be waiting.

As you expected, Flowey was there, in the exact same place and position he always was when you met him. However, something was different, something wasn't ' _right_ '. Flowey eyed you, his expression empty, the smile missing from his face. He looked like he wanted to say something as he looked at you with his mouth agape, but he didn't.

"..."

He disappeared back into the ground.

Something was off.

\--

Everything else had been normal so far, and you were wandering around the ruins. You had your plans, and you had already memorised everything in the Ruins from start to finish dozens of resets ago. It would be a breeze. Then, you would meet Sans at the same place, and hopefully he still remembered, and he would greet you with a hug like he always did, ever since the twenty-second reset. If you remembered even after the true reset, surely he would too, right? Maybe, you'd give up your journey and live with him, or you'd continue, depending on what he wanted. You'd give him the choice.

_What if he didn't remember?_

Your brow twitched as your mind hit you with that question. You quickly moved on.

What happened if you met the perpetrator, the one causing all this mess?

Would you kill them? Maybe, if you had to. Would they kill you? You hoped not.

Would they kill everyone after that?

You refused to continue on that train of thought.

You were making your way down the long corridor, Toriel testing your 'independence', as she always did the first time she met you.

 _The first time she met you_.

What a lie, a cruel joke.

Then, you heard a voice, sudden, completely unanticipated, a voice you were supposed to hear much later on.

Not now. Definitely not now.

"(y/N)- iS tHAt yOu... caN yoU HeaR me..."

You froze. It sounded like him, and yet at the same time, it didn't. His voice was echoey, laced with some hidden, dark emotion.

"plee--E€%#*@ë-aSe--"

His voiced glitched out as you slowly turned around. As your eyes met his, you could only feel your heart filling with horror and sorrow.

The short skeleton was looking straight back at you, but he seemed to materialise from a glitch. He looked pretty much the same, put every time his form glitched, his colours flashed negative before returning to normal. His eyes were wide as he stared at you, his left pupil surrounded by a ring of blue and yellow. In his glitched form, blue streaks ran down from his eyesockets as if they were permanent tears, the word "ERROR" dancing around his form as he struggled to maintain his physicality. You wanted to ask him what happened, and what caused this, and what was going on, but your mouth hung open, unmoving in your shock.

"(y/n), pleASe, tell me you remEMbeR..."

He glitched again into negative as he spoke. He seemed so broken, so fearful, so small, his eyes widened in terror and confusion. You reached out to him as you mouthed his name.

_Sans._

He held out his hand, ungloved, the bones in his fingers glitching to form strange colours. However, as soon as you touched him, he glitched out, and there was no evidence that he had been there except for the fading, floating white rectangles and code fragments.

_Why......_

\--

**[RESET]**

Again.

One more time.

Sans materialised and met you around the same place, but not exactly where you found him the last time. You asked for an explanation. The first thing he did was to emphasise how glad he was to see you. All he managed to tell you that he had become an error in coding, and was basically an anomaly in a timeless void. He wanted to elaborate, seeing your confused, worried expression, but he was cut off.

\--

**[RESET]**

One more time.

You did the routine. Make your way there. Search for Sans.

Sans was waiting for you, and seemed to be glitching out less now. He stood there, and waved as you walked into the room as if you had been called to do some chores and were returning.

"Don't the Resets affect you?"

Sans paused, hands in the pockets of his hoodie as usual. "doesn'T sEem like it."

\--

**[RESET]**

_What were they doing?_

One more time.

You managed to speak with Sans long enough this time. He pretty much lived outside the cycle now, but in a white, blank space between the games files and code, where there was nothing, not even sound nor shadow. While waiting for you to come back after all those repeated resets, he had almost gotten the hang of maintaining a physical form.

"i don't think it's you theY'rE trYing to stall."

"Then who?"

Sans opened his mouth, hesitant but ready to explain. Then, suddenly, your form disappeared as it floated up and away as code, and he waved a hand in the empty space where you stood just a millisecond ago. He sighed.

_they're gonna break the entire game at thiS rAtE..._

\--

**[RESET]**

They were going to break that stupid button sooner or later. If that happened, it would be for the better, anyway.

Every time Sans was on the brink of explaining his theory, they would initiate a reset. The most you got out of Sans was "i've met them before." And then you were Reset.

This time, Sans met you at your starting point. "i won't meet you anymore from here on out. but i'll be watching over ya."

This time, they didn't reset. You made it to the area outside the Ruins, and everything was the same, except for two notable absences.

Obviously, Sans wasn't there to greet you with his whoopee cushion when you reached the first bridge, but something else triggered your alarms.

Papyrus was gone too.

\--

**[RESET]**

This time, you actually made it to Snowdin. Everything was as per normal, except for the house at the end.

A scrappy sign hung on its door, reading "SALE - CALL 3917392 IF INTERESTED". The house seemed unoccupied for a very long time. You went over and knocked, once, twice. You were only met with silence.

As you tried the door, you realised it wasn't even locked. The knob turned, and the hinges creaked as you pushed it slowly open.

The house was completely empty.

\--

**[RESET]**

You and Sans sat in silence at your starting point. They couldn't do anything to you two here, anyway. Every Reset would just seem like the interference in a call. Eventually, Sans decided to explain.

"whoever is doing the ReSEts - they're human, just like you. oNlY yOUngER."

That 'whoever' tried a Reset the moment Sans finished. It was a mild inconvenience as you sat up from the flower bed, seeing Sans still in the same position and place as he was before, as if nothing happened.

"they were nice at first. but not for long."

They Reset twice as Sans was speaking. Having to sit back up every time was becoming an annoyance.

"they go us out of the underground. then they did a true reset. like what they did to us not too long ago."

They were spamming the Resets now. Eventually Sans placed a hand on your chest to stop you from getting up. He seemed more awkward than usual as his hand came into contact with you.

"(y/n), just lie doWn. iT'S okay."

Strangely, his hand didn’t feel much like a hand at all. As he pushed you back down gently, your back coming to rest against the flowerbed, it felt as if there was some gentle force pressing you down. Sans shifted to sit beside your head, and his hand glitched out for a moment as he brushed a stray strand of hair out of your face. Your heart ached as he did so - just a few hours ago, he had done exactly the same thing, and even though he had changed, his heart was still evident in his actions.

"after their pacifist run, they got it in their head that it was their mission to kill everyone. so they did, and i was eventually the only one left. i met them there in the judgement hall to stop them before they reached the king.

"i'll admit. i gained quite a bit of exp having to kill them over and over. but, they'd memorised all my attacks, and eventually they struck me down.

"now here's the strange part - straight after I crawled out of sight, grasping that fatal wound on my chest, they went back to their save point. threw me back to where i stood. dragged mE bAck FRom tHe briNk of dEAth."

You looked up at Sans. His eyes were dark and empty now, and his form glitched again as he stared into blank space.

"i think you can guess what they kept doing after that."

The Resets had stopped. Whoever they were had figured out that it wasn't going to do anything to the two of you. You reached out a hand to pat his shoulder, and Sans flinched for a moment before he changed his mind, lifted his arm, intertwining his fingers with yours as he squeezed your hand for assurance. As you looked into his expression, he seemed to be continuously reminding himself that it was just you, he was safe, we were safe, but you couldn't understand why. He looked back down at you, his irises back to normal, and in those eyes, you could see him hiding something. It was the same feeling he had been hiding ever since you met him, but much stronger now, much more evident, and you were afraid he was going to break if he held it in any longer.

"strangely, i managed to convince them to do a reset. so that’s what they did." He removed his hand, and yours fell onto his lap.

"then _you_ fell down. couldn’t save, couldn’t reset, but you remembered. like i did."

Sans paused, moving his hand to brush against your fingers. You opened your hand, fingers pressing against his palm, feeling the familiar feeling of his bony fingers beneath all that glitching out. Sans looked as if the glitching was uncomfortable, but he insisted - he wanted to feel you, to make sure you were still there, that he wasn't alone despite his plight, that you still existed.

"i didn’t feel so alone anymore. Your determination nearly overrode theirs, but…"

"It wasn't enough."

You finished his sentence for him. Sans let out a long sigh.

"One more thing, (y/n)."

You glanced at him. You looked straight into his eyes, catching his blue and yellow irises flitting around the room as he refused to make eye contact. He seemed sad, but you didn’t have any idea how to comfort him.

"it's best you don't see me anymore."

You sat up, not diverting your gaze. The skeleton fidgeted a little as he pointed his eyes downwards.

"i'm not me anymore, (y/n). i would explain, but..."

You didn’t know how to reply. His words had truth to them, though - he called you by your full name more often, and had stopped with the jokes for now. Though, maybe it was maybe only because of the situation the two of you were in.

"i'll be dangerous, (y/n). it's best i kEeP YOu away from me. It won't be long before i become a complete glitch and-"

_...and lose myself..._

You refused to take his word for it.

"You're coming with me, Sans - I don't want to go through this alone, and you're going to tell me everything that's happened. I'm not gonna let you be alone either, because that will mean letting them win."

Sans let out a trembling sigh.

A short silence passed before you turned and threw your arms around him. His form glitched out for a moment, but soon enough, it felt like Sans in your arms again, his hoodie in your clenched fist, unwilling to let go, your head on his bony shoulder. Sans was stunned for a while, his hands raised beside you for a while, before he slowly placed his arms around your back and pressed them against you. You felt the same, familiar warmth beneath his odd, glitchy exterior, and Sans felt comforted in your embrace, reminded of all the beautiful things he had experienced together with you.

"... i Don'T wAnt tO lET yOu gO..." Sans spoke beside you, his voice barely audible. He hugged you tight now, his arms secure around you as he dug his face into your shoulder. He seemed so small, so vulnerable, you wanted to hold him forever, protect him forever, make him stay with you forever. The material of his hoodie gathered in your clenched fists as you held him closer to you, feeling his chest against yours.

"Neither do I..."

\--

**[RESET]**

"ddaww."

You opened your eyes as you found yourself lying on the flowerbed again. You caught Sans wiping his eyesockets quickly with his sleeve from the corner of your eye. As you eyed his sleeve, you saw wet blue stains on them.

"That sucks," you sat up. "I was actually enjoying that."

"you mean you usually don't?" Sans feigned shock as his form glitched momentarily, his hoodie and skull turning black beneath the glitch before returning to normal. "i feel hurt, man. tell me next time before i dish those out for free."

You punched his shoulder. "I always enjoy your hugs, Error," you joked back.

"error?" Sans averted his gaze for a while before smirking. "heh, i suppose that sounds kinda cool." He shrugged, closing his eyes.

You looked at your shoulder, where his head was resting on you just moments ago. The same blue stains were there. Sans hardly cried - whatever the anomaly was doing, it was taking a great toll on him.

You smiled with him. Still, not all was lost.

At least, not yet, anyway.


End file.
